Although there is still a gender division of labor in post-industrial countries, evidence seems to suggest that there is a growing number of fathers that want to be more involved with their children. Using a Time Use Survey, this seminar analyzes how paternal time devoted to children under 10 years old differs across educational level, income, age, number of paid working hours, occupation, and partner’s occupation, among other independent variables. Understanding patterns of fathers, who are more involved with their children, will presumably give some clues on how to promote gender equality in parenting. Furthermore, while research shows that fatherhood involvement is positively related with child outcomes and gender equality, less is known about the benefits of having both work and family roles for working fathers themselves and their jobs. Using the conceptual framework of work-family enrichment, Marc Grau-Grau explores how resources developed at home are positively transferred and applied at work.

Marc Grau-Grau, WAPPP Fellow; PhD Candidate in Social Policy, School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh

This seminar explores why investigating health inequities in relation to multiple dimensions of social inequality is critical to promoting women's health. Drawing on her quantitative and qualitative research, Madina Agénor addresses how sexual orientation and race/ethnicity simultaneously affect cervical cancer screening among U.S. women and shows that neglecting to examine the role of multiple dimensions of social inequality can lead to interventions that fail to promote the health of the most marginalized women.

Madina Agénor, Assistant Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health

Recent literature on non-cognitive skills provides promising evidence on the power of community and classroom based interventions for closing achievement gaps across school quality, race, and class. Yet, much of this work has been conducted on males that attend elite institutions in the U.S. There is very little work on how these same tactics can be implemented to overcome gender barriers and improve educational achievement of girls, particularly those that attend schools in non-western settings. In this seminar, Sally Nuamah investigates the experiences of girls from underprivileged backgrounds in Ghana striving to be the first in their families to go to college. She finds that school structure - leadership, curriculum, and peer networks - mediates the effects of their socio-cultural environments and individual background through the facilitation of positive academic identities (non-cognitive skills) that promote identity building and strategy development. These positive academic identities are useful for navigating the gender specific barriers that these girls face, thereby enabling their academic achievement.

How
can women get ahead in competitive fields? One proposed way is through
sponsorship programs – where a person (the sponsor) advocates for a protégé,
and in doing so, takes a stake in her success. While these types of programs
have received popular attention, little empirical evidence exists on their
effectiveness. Coffman uses a laboratory experiment to explore two channels
through which sponsorship has been posited to increase advancement in a competitive
workplace. In the experimental setting, being sponsored provides a credible
signal of one’s ability and/or creates a link between the protégé’s and
sponsor’s payoffs. She finds that both features of sponsorship significantly
increase willingness to compete among men on average, while neither of these
channels significantly increases willingness to compete among women on average.
Similarly, sponsorship has a directionally more positive effect on the earnings
of male protégés than female protégés. Therefore, sponsorship does not close
the gender gap in competitiveness or earnings. This seminar will explore how
these insights from the laboratory could help to inform the design of
sponsorship programs in the field. Speaker:

Katie Coffman, Assistant
Professor, Department of Economics, Ohio State University

This seminar explores the assumption of many cross-national studies that gender-role attitudes fall along a single continuum between traditional and egalitarian. Brinton analyzes over-time data from 18 European countries and identifies trajectories of attitudinal change. Brinton demonstrates that while traditional gender-role attitudes have precipitously and uniformly declined, European nations are not converging towards one dominant egalitarian model but instead are diverging across three distinct varieties of egalitarianism.
Speaker: Mary C. Brinton, Reischauer Institute Professor of Sociology, Harvard University

Gender Inequality persists to varying degrees across post-industrial economies. The seminar introduces the new Weatherhead Initiative at Harvard to study comparative gender inequality in OECD countries and outlines some of the major scholarly and policy challenges relating to the structure of work and its articulation with the family.

What is the impact of gender biases on promotion and advancement in the scientific community? Dr. Corinne Moss-Racusin shares her latest research exploring the impact of gender biases on meritocracy, diversity, and the pursuit of knowledge throughout academic science. She discusses educational strategies designed to increase awareness and reduce bias, and provides examples of effective scientific diversity interventions. SPEAKER: Corinne Moss-Racusin, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Skidmore College

With gender equality increasingly a business imperative, in addition to being a human right, many leaders across the sectors wonder how we can get there. In the first WAPPP Seminar of 2015-16, Professor Bohnet discusses her forthcoming book "What Works: Gender Equality, By Design" (Harvard University Press 2016). Reviewing the impact of what we have been doing to date, including diversity and leadership trainings, networking, and mentorship/sponsorship programs, Bohnet proposes a new approach to leveling the playing field. Building on insights from Behavioral Economics, she argues that to overcome gender bias in organizations and society, we should focus on de-biasing systems—how we evaluate performance, hire, promote, structure tests, form groups—rather than on trying to de-bias people. Speaker: Iris Bohnet, Professor of Public Policy; Director, Women and Public Policy Program, Harvard Kennedy School

The constraints facing women and girls worldwide range from epidemic levels of gender-based violence to biased laws and norms that prevent them from owning property, working, and making decisions about their own lives. The World Bank’s new book, “Voice and Agency: Empowering Women and Girls for Shared Prosperity,” documents major gender gaps and reviews promising policies and interventions. Underlining that women's agency–their ability to make decisions and act on them independently–has concrete as well as intrinsic value, WAPPP Fellow Jeni Klugman highlights new interventions from around the world that are used to empower women and girls, in conjunction with United Nations post-2015 global development agenda.

In STEM subjects at school girls achieve at the same levels as boys, or higher, but their participation in these important subjects declines as soon as they are able to make choices between subjects. Jo Boaler examines the reasons that girls and women don’t choose to take these subjects by highlighting the inequities in the education system. Boaler finds that a girl's mindset, combined with inequitable teaching of mathematics and science in schools, can affect their decisions to pursue STEM subjects. Speaker: Jo Boaler, Professor of Mathematics Education, Stanford University; Co-Founder of Youcubed